


A Line in the Sand

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Celebrity, F/M, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-26 21:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2666705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Skye Coulson takes a job as publicist for up and coming actor Lance Hunter, she doesn't expect them to hit it off so well. She also doesn't expect to have to watch him date someone else. When Lance and Bobbi break up, things between him and Skye get complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Horror Stories

It’s a new job and a new start, and Skye really just wants to put the past behind her. So after she’s done reading up on Shield Management’s latest acquisition, an up-and-coming (seriously up-and-coming, his only credits are a guest spot on an episode NCIS, a music video, and a couple of commercials) actor from London, she decides to get meeting him out of the way.

Which is why she’s knocking on the door of a two-bedroom apartment at nine o’clock at night, on the off chance that his social life is as dull as her own.

The man who answers the door is identical to the one whose headshots she has sitting in the file in her bag, which is a good thing (the first time Skye realized that some actors made liberal use of photoshop in their headshots, she was stunned).

“Lance Hunter?” she asks, just to be sure.

“Who’s asking?” he responds with a wink and a large amount of charm.

Between the accent and the devilish smile, he should at least find a home on the CW, playing a high school student about ten years younger than his actual age. And if he’s actually a decent actor, hopefully he’ll find even better roles.

“Skye Coulson,” she sticks out her hand to shake. “I’m your new publicist.”

Right now he’s her only assignment, which Skye hopes means that they have a lot of faith in him, rather than very little in her.

He looks wary, and Skye starts to think that maybe showing up unannounced at his apartment is coming on a bit strong. But he invites her in, so it must not be too strong.

She takes in the apartment, which is surprisingly clean for a twenty-six year old bachelor. It’s not quite as opulent as the living quarters of her last clients, but at least his coffee table does have stray cocaine residue on it. Skye takes that to mean that Lance Hunter is nothing she can’t handle.

She hopes.

There’s a cold bottle of beer sweating on the kitchen table and all Skye can think about is how nice it would have been to spend the night on Jemma’s couch, drinking away her memories of the last week.

But meeting her new client is the second item on a long list of to-dos, and Skye knows she won’t feel better until she gets at least some of them done. So a night of drowning her sorrows just isn’t in the cards.

“Long day?” Lance asks. She must have been eying that bottle like a lion eyes its prey or something. It’s embarrassing to think about.

“Long week,” she responds candidly.

His eyebrows shoot up in amusement and he grabs another beer from the fridge.

“Want to stick around and have one?” he offers. “Get to know each other?” She should so no; she’s here on business. But it’s been the week from hell and if she can’t drink in front of the client she’ll (hopefully) be spending most of her time with from now on, that’s going to wear on her. Besides, it’s just one beer.

She sticks out her hand to take the beer from him and twists the cap off. She’s tempted to just guzzle whole thing in one go, but settles for taking a long pull and setting the bottle down on the kitchen table. Then she takes a seat in the chair in front of it.

“Want to talk about it?” he asks.

Skye snorts, “With the guy I’m getting paid to babysit?”

“Call it bonding. It can’t possibly be worse than my week. They have me auditioning for the CW,” he tells her. “To play a sixteen year old.”

“I got fired,” Skye counters, even though that’s probably not something she should be admitting to the guy she’s now working with. “And I lost my home because of it.”

“Must’ve been a cushy gig to come with a place to live,” he remarks.

Skye resists the urge to snort again.

“Only because the needed me around to clean up after them 24/7,” she’s now remembering the number of times she was woken up in the middle of the night to make some idiotic stunt disappear. “I assume you’ve heard of the Wards?”

Lance thinks for a moment, and Skye swears that she can see the exact moment when it all clicks in his mind.

“That super rich family with that video or whatever?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she confirms. “Dad’s a senator, mom’s rolling in money from her father’s hotel business. Four kids who have never had to work for anything in their lives, and it shows.”

“They sound awful,” he sounds oblivious to how much of a media disaster they currently are and exactly what was on that video.

“Lance, six days ago a tape leaked showing the oldest son making a slur-filled rant about the immigrants employed at the family estate while the youngest son snorts lines of cocaine in the background.”

And that’s just what was going on in front of the camera. Awful doesn’t begin to cut it.

Lance grins, “And I bet you’ve seen worse.”

Skye sighs, finishing off her beer. In a way, she’s glad she got fired, because at least she doesn’t have to put up with the family from hell anymore. And she managed to land on her feet. Six days later and she’s found a new job. Apparently she lasted the longest out of any of the Ward’s PR people.

But she’s still homeless; at some point Jemma’s going to want her couch back.

Lance grabs them each other beer while Skye regales him with horror stories involving affairs, drug deals, stolen cars, and a rooftop orgy.

“But apparently, a hundred thousand dollar donation to the school’s library is all it takes to make something like that disappear,” she finishes, now three beers in.

“And the professor?”

“Now teaching at a community college in Arkansas.”

“Well the least I can do is promise you I’ll never do that,” Lance assures her. “It sounds bloody painful.”

Skye laughs. Lance is pretty funny, and the way he responds to her horror stories almost makes it worth having to go through them in the first place. Plus, with that accent and the biceps currently on display in his gray tank top, he’s hot as hell. And he’s probably look even better if he ditched the shirt altogether.

That’s definitely the alcohol talking, so Skye dismisses it. She would not have those kinds of thoughts sober. She can’t.

“Wanna make it four?” Lance gestures behind him to the fridge, where Skye assumes there’s another six-pack waiting. Another mark in his favor, he has great taste in beer.

She declines, “No thanks. I’m gonna need a cab as it is.”

“I’ve got a solution for that,” he tells her.

Oh no, he’s going to proposition her. She can’t go through that again, Thomas Ward and his wander hands were enough for one lifetime.

She’s trying to think of an excuse to get out there immediately when he continues, “Move in with me.”

She wasn’t expecting that.

“Wouldn’t that be weird,” she asks. They’re going to be working together, it’s unprofessional enough that she’s half drunk in his kitchen.

“You lived with the Wards,” Lance shrugs. Technically, she lived in the guesthouse on their massive estate, not the spare bedroom. “I’d have to charge you rent, but look at this this way, with you paying half of the rent I can take less shifts at the diner. Then I can go on more auditions, hopefully book something better than a show about a small town high school, and make us both enough money for a place much nicer than this somewhere down the line.”

He does have a point. And he can’t be any worse than a roommate she finds on Craiglist. At least she’ll know where to find him most of the time.

She asks to see the room he’s offering her, and it’s as clean as the rest of the apartment (not as neat as Jemma’s, but than again she’s never seen anyone keep an apartment as neat as Jemma’s). There’s a mattress on the floor that she’ll probably want to replace at some point, but it’ll do for a while. There’s a suitcase and a broken lamp lying on the floor, but Lance promises to get rid of those.

She could totally see herself living here.

And the moment he mentions the rent, which is downright reasonable for LA, Skye is sold.

“I’ll be by tomorrow afternoon with my stuff,” she tells him.

He looks relieved.

Jemma’s relieved too, when Skye tells her. 

“That’s amazing, job and an apartment in less than a week. I was prepared to have you for much longer. Are you sure you want to take the first thing offered to you?”

Jemma insists on looking the place over for herself, though, and meeting Lance before Skye officially moves in.

“Not bad,” she comments on the apartment. “Really not bad,” she comments on Skye’s new roommate. “That won’t be a problem, will it?”

Unfortunately, Lance Hunter hasn’t gotten any less hot now that Skye’s had time to sober up. But she’s a professional; she can keep that to herself.

“Not at all,” she tells Jemma.

Skye doesn’t think Jemma quite believes her, but she doesn’t press the issue any further and helps unload Skye’s meager possessions (the Ward’s insisted that all of the clothing they’d provided while she worked for them was in fact their property) from the back seat of her car.

Skye can’t help but feel that things are looking up.


	2. Enter Bobbi Morse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another short. The next two will be significantly longer.

Lance gets his big break exactly two weeks after Skye moves in. Well really he gets the first audition for what will become his break then.

When his agent calls to let him know about the first callback, both he and Skye try their best not to get their hopes up.

“It’s just the first round of callbacks,” Lance says, more to himself than to Skye, as he scoops chicken out of the crockpot they’ve both become completely reliant on. “There could be a dozen other guys there.”

Skye nods, “Just treat it like any other audition.”

She doesn’t mention that last week they announced the casting of Melinda May in the same movie he’s auditioning for. The Melinda May, Academy Award winner for Best Actress for her role in The Cavalry.

This could be a huge deal for Lance, a starring role in a movie with an Oscar winner.

But the way he’s picking at his food makes it abundantly clear that Lance is nervous enough as it is, so Skye doesn’t want to say anything else that might add to those nerves.

After dinner, though, she spends a couple hours online looking up his rumored competition. They’ve all got similarly empty resumes.

He might actually have a shot at this.

The first callback is followed by two more, and both Lance and Skye have trouble containing their excitement. Those auditions are followed by a chemistry read with each of the three actresses they’re considering for the female lead.

Lance comes home from that completely starry-eyed.

It takes Skye a full hour of prodding (and the liberal use of beer) to get him to talk about his chemistry read with Bobbi Morse. But once he does start speaking, it’s like opening up a dam.

“You don’t understand, Skye,” he tells her, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so gorgeous in my life. I mean, she’s beautiful on tv, but in person… wow.”

Skye tries to ignore the sting she gets in her chest as she listens to Lance gush over Bobbi. She’s just lonely; it’s been at least a few years since she felt the desire to talk about anyone like that. Not since college, not since Miles.

“She’s got this cute little mole between her eyebrows,” Lance, definitely drunk now, pokes Skye between her eyes, right where Bobbi’s mole is. Skye’s seen photos of her, she didn’t need the demonstration. “And she’s so funny, you’d really like her.”

Right now, Skye certainly doesn’t feel that way.

In her bed that night, Skye reminds herself that Lance doesn’t have a shot in hell with Bobbi. She’s a model-turned-actress who just wrapped up an extremely successful tv show.

And she’s a good four inches taller than Lance. Women like Bobbi Morse don’t date shrimp like Lance Hunter.

So Skye has nothing to worry about. Which is good, because she isn’t worried. She’s just concerned, as his publicist and his friend, that Lance is setting himself up for disappointment.

Four days alter, Lance’s agent calls with good news. He’s gotten the lead role in A Fractured House.

Bobbi has not been offered the female lead. Skye tries not to be too happy about that.

“We’re celebrating tonight,” Lance tells her once he’s hung up the phone.

“Drinks at the Boiler Room?” Skye suggests. It’s their go-to bar.

“Sounds like a plan.”

Then he surprises her by lifting her up and spinning her around in a circle. At first she’s taken by surprise, but then she’s just glad for his strong (muscular, well-defined) arms.

He sets her down on the couch, and they both collapse into a fit of giggles.

“You’re my good luck charm, you know,” he tells her once they’ve both calmed down.

She gives him a skeptical look.

“I’m serious,” he insists. “I go months without a single callback, then you show up at my door and a few weeks later I’ve got a starring role in a big movie. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

It’s a good day, for both of them, but it’s also a busy one. Skye has to coordinate the press release regarding Lance’s casting, and then she has a few calls to make concerning updates to her wardrobe. He may not be a huge star yet, but he’s the lead in a movie with Melinda May and Raina (no last name). He’ll be attracting attention soon enough, he needs to have more clothing options than jeans, t-shirts and one beat up leather jacket.

Skye does find time to run out for donuts, though, a celebratory dessert to go with the pizza Lance is ordering. She even picks up a full dozen, thinking they’ll need plenty of junk food to soothe their inevitable hangovers tomorrow morning.

She considers inviting Jemma and Fitz to join them at the bar that night, but she and Lance are going to be incredibly busy very soon, so Skye wants to enjoy as much one-on-one time with him as she possibly can.

Skye refuses to let herself overthink her outfit for tonight’s celebrations. She puts on her usual blank jeans, slinky top and booties, then tops it off with the leather jacket she gifted herself after she successfully survived her first month of Ward family horrors.

The fact that Lance is wearing the one button-down shirt he owns should make her suspicious, but Skye just chalks it up to his commitment to celebrating, that and she’s distracted by how good he looks in blue.

They get a cab to The Boiler Room just before ten, and there’s already a decent crowd. Lance grabs them a table, while Skye goes to the bar to order drinks. Since it’s such an exciting occasion, she opts to forgo her usual beer for something called a Black Forest Margarita. It’s fruity and strong and Skye likes it’s raspberry color. Plus, she’s always been a tequila kind of girl. She orders Lance’s favorite microbrew and walks back to their table, sipping from her drink as she goes to keep it from spilling over the rim of the glass.

She’s concerned to see that a tall blonde has taken over their table. She’s wondering where the hell Lance has disappeared to when she sees a man’s shoulder, clad in light blue fabric, peek out from the woman.

It seems Lance has forgotten to mention that Bobbi Morse will be joining them.

Skye considers sending Jemma a last minute text, begging her to come out and distract her, but then Lance waves her over.

Burying her disappointment, Skye slides into the chair next to him.

“Skye, this is Bobbi. Bobbi, this is Skye,” Lance introduces them.

Skye plasters a large smile on her face and say to Bobbi, “Nice to meet you. Lance as told me a lot about you.”

A part of her wants to embarrass him by revealing exactly how smitten he is, but it doesn’t work. Both Bobbi and Lance just grin at her comment.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Bobbi says.

They make polite conversation, Skye telling some of her lighter stories about working for the Wards, Lance talking about some of the customers at the diner job he’s just quit, and Bobbi talking about she just finished getting her degree in biochemistry from UCLA. Skye’s now glad she didn’t have time to beg for Jemma’s presence. Watching her fawn over Bobbi for being a fellow biochemist would have just added insult to injury.

Skye eventually excuses herself to use the restroom. The line is long, but at least she can use the time to get over the shock of Bobbi crashing their night out (although Skye knows this is probably more Lance’s fault that Bobbi’s). She’s just finished washing her hands and reapplying her lipstick when some creep grabs her ass on her way back to the table.

“What the fuck,” Skye practically screams at him. As if she wasn’t in a bad enough mood already.

“Come on, sweetie, it’s a compliment,” the guy wraps an arm around Skye ad pulls her in close. His breath reeks of booze.

“No thanks,” Skye tries to work her way out of his grasp, but he holds on tightly to her shoulder.

“She said fuck off,” a voice says from behind Skye.

The next thing she knows, she’s being firmly yanked from the creep’s hands and walked back to the table… by Bobbi.

“You okay,” she asks.

“Yeah,” Skye mumbles.

“You fall in?” Lance asks, when they both take their seats.

“Long line,” Bobbi explains. “I didn’t bother.”

Skye’s glad that Bobbi doesn’t mention the disgusting jackass to Lance. He can have a bit of a temper sometimes and, as his publicist, Skye knows Lance punching the living daylights out of the guy is not a good way to start his film career.

She gives Bobbi a grateful smiles, and finds that she does genuinely like the other woman, even if she doesn’t want to.

And if she wasn’t sold on Bobbi already, the fact that she drinks both Skye and Lance under the table would have done it. The endless supply of dirty jokes is just a bonus.

But that doesn’t mean she wants to listen to the two of them have sex in the other bedroom.

She’s in the middle of typing out a long, detailed text to Jemma, explaining all of the night’s events and asking to crash on her couch, when Lance slings an arm around her shoulder.

“Me and Bob are going to go back to her place. You okay to go home on your own?” he asks.

Skye’s not pleased with the thought of what they’ll be getting up to at Bobbi’s, but it’s better than being kicked out of her apartment for them to do it there.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” she tells him and calls for a cab.

Bobbi insists that she and Lance wait for Skye’s cab to get there (she’s secretly glad for this, in case the creep from earlier reappears) before they leave.

Once she’s home, Skye spend half of the night awake in bed, trying not to think about what Lance and Bobbi are probably doing.

At this point it’s kind of impossible for her to deny her feelings for Lance, at least to herself. She’s totally fucked.

One the bright side, Lance doesn’t get home until one in the afternoon, so Skye’s able to sleep in without him knowing that she was up until 5 in the morning thinking about him.


	3. Dealing With It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the comments and kudos. I really appreciate it!

The predictions for A Fractured House’s opening weekend are extremely strong, and Skye’s fielding call after call requesting interviews and photo-shoots and endorsement deals. It feels good for to be back in the full swing of things again.

It also serves as a good distraction rom Lance and Bobbi’s relationship, which is growing progressively more and more serious.

Luckily, they spend most of their couple-y time at Bobbi’s house. Still, Skye’s had to build up a reasonable about of immunity to see them being cutesy together on the red carpets and at the industry parties she has to accompany Lance to.

At least she gets to be amused by the fact that Bobbi refuses to give up her love of sky-high heels just because Lance looks like a child next to her.

Except that children don’t generally have full beards.

Skye teases him mercilessly about it. 

The movie opens stronger than the tracking indicated, and there’s even talk about a sequel. Skye’s too busy coordinating Lance’s publicity schedule and working it around the auditions his agent is scheduling to really do much celebrating, though.

“You sure you don’t want to come?” Lance asks, checking himself out in the mirror. Skye’s successfully managed to get him to integrate henleys and button-down and even the occasional blazer into his wardrobe.

“Yeah, I’ve got to make sure we don’t lose your moment from this film without oversaturating you,” Skye replies. “Just remember you’re doing the view tomorrow morning, so don’t stay out too late. You need to be as charming as possible, and you’re an asshole when you’re tired.”

“Only to you,” he retorts, sliding his wallet into the pocket of his pants.

“Good thing I can handle it, then.”

“You know you love me.”

“You know you’d be a completely disaster if it wasn’t for me,” she tells him.

“And that’s why I love you.”

It’s surprisingly sweet; Lance says things like that sometimes. One minute they’re snarking at each other, and suddenly Lance says something that makes the late nights and early mornings worth it.

Well, her steadily rising paycheck is what makes the job worth it. But the sweet comments make it worth living with him, in the two bedroom apartment he should definitely look into upgrading from soon.

Both the job and he living arrangement feel decidedly less worth it when Lance pocket dials her just before four in the morning, still celebrating at the club.

Skye would have expected Bobbi to drag him home by now, but then she remembers that Bobbi is filming in Maine for the next two weeks.

When Lance doesn’t answer her return phone call, Skye gets out of bed. She throws on jeans and sneakers and makes the short drive down The Playground.

After sweet-talking the bouncer, she’s able to get in despite not meeting their dress code. Once she spots Lance, she makes a beeline for him. She has to elbow her way through the crowd, but it’s worth it for the look of shock on his face when he sees her in her jeans and oversize sweater (stolen from him shortly after she moved in).

“It’s four in the freaking morning,” she screams at him, once they’re close enough to the back exit for her voice to be heard over the loud thump of the bass.

“Thanks mum, I had no idea,” he shoots back, clearly embarrassed about having her yank him away from his crowd of admirers. “I’m so glad you came all the way out here just to tell what time it is.”

“Don’t ‘mum’ me. Your mother isn’t responsible for making sure you show up at The View in three hours.”

And with that, she drags him by hi ear out the back door and to her car. Technically, there might be paparazzi waiting outside, reading to jump at the opportunity for a photo of this, but Skye’s to angry to care.

It’s bad enough that she has to wake up early every Monday morning to make sure he leaves for set on time. This is a whole new level of babysitting, and she’s going to make sure he knows how she feels about it.

Hopefully it will deter him from pulling the same kind of stunt in the future.

After a hot shower and a large pot of coffee, Lance manages to work up enough charm to handle the ladies of The View, despite his lack of sleep. And after a five-hour nap, and another hour of the silent treatment, he manages to put together an apology that Skye accepts.

\----

After their next-door neighbors turn out to be selling drugs from their apartment, Lance decides it’s time to buy a place of his own. The fact that he’s just signed a deal to headline a big action film called Face My Enemy (his third film, and second starring role) makes this decision pretty easy.

She’s just not sure if he’s expecting her to come along for the ride, or if she should start looking for her own place, too.

“I mean, it’s nice,” he tells the real estate agent walking them through their fourth Beverly Hills mini-mansion. “But Skye definitely needs a bigger bedroom than that. Preferably with attached bath.”

Well, that answers Skye’s question. She’s relieved, as she grown used to having Lance around (when he isn’t crashing at Bobbi’s), and it makes her job a lot easier when she knows where is he (or where he isn’t, at least).

“You mean you’re not together?” the real estate agent asks.

Skye blushes and Lance bursts into loud laughter. Somehow, this woman has managed to miss nearly six months of celebrity dating gossip, during which Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter’s relationship has been a fixture of every celebrity gossip site. She must live under a rock, or not have internet (which Skye thinks is pretty much the same thing).

Lance decides to buy the sixth house they see, and it gets his money manager’s approval. Skye’s excited for the great view from her bedroom window and the prospect of having her own bathroom. Lance is pretty neat, as far as the guys Skye has known go, but he’s not perfect. Their shower was always a point of contention.

Their new home is also closer to Bobbi’s, and having her around more isn’t the worst thing in the world. She’s managed to sweet-talk Lance into cooking things that don’t involve a crock-pot, and Skye gets to reap all the benefits of that.

Skye is decidedly less enthusiastic about Bobbi spending the night, though. The first few times, she and Lance restrict things to the bedroom, which Skye can live with since Lance’s room is far enough away that she doesn’t have to hear it happening.

But then they get more bold, and decide to christen the new living room, the kitchen, and the patio directly under Skye’s window. Amidst her various attempts to black the sound out, Skye spares a few thoughts for hoping that the next door neighbors can’t hear this too. Or if they do, Skye never actually has to meet them. They might have gotten away with screwing in Lance’s bathroom, but the acoustics are too strong and project out across the entire floor.

But the final straw comes when Lance gets home from work one day to find Skye watching tv in the living room in her underwear.

“What are you wearing?” he asks in a tone Skye really doesn’t appreciate.

“Chill, I thought you’d be at Bobbi’s,” Skye responds, grabbing a blanket off the arm of the couch and trying to cover herself as quickly as possible.

“What if I’d been with Bobbi? And she’d seen you lounging about half naked where anyone can see?” Lance flings his arms over his head in emphasis.

Skye seriously doubts Bobbi would care.

“Probably something like, ‘Is the last episode of Hell’s Kitchen up on Demand yet?’ What the hell is your problem?” Skye raises her voice to match his.

Lance sighs and takes a moment to calm himself down before speaking again, “We need to set some rules.”

Skye blinks up innocently, trying to shelve her anger, “Like”?”

“Like no hanging out in the living room without any pants on,” he says.

“Fine, as long we also make a rule against sex on the couch, and under my window, and probably in the kitchen too.”

Lance’s cheeks turn red at the mention of the kitchen.

“I have ears, you know,” she tells him. “Do you really need to grunt that much? There’s no way Bobbi thinks that’s hot.”

The rest of Lance’s face turns as red as his cheeks, but he masks his embarrassment with more anger.

“Fine, no sex outside the bedroom and no naked tv watching.”

“I’m not naked,” she yells at him as he heads for his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Skye does to bed angry with him and wakes up still mad.

She gets over it when he leaves flowers outside her door, accompanied a long apology letter (she imagines he doesn’t want to talk about his sexcapades to her face) and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones.

She hopes she never needs them.

\----

One of the many product endorsements offers Lance’s receives is for an underwear company called Jenny James. Skye knows their ads receive a lot of love from teens and twenty-something on the internet, especially straight women.

Since he’s currently filming an action film that Skye knows will be marketing almost exclusively to men, she figures accepting the job will be a good balance.

And okay, she gets a lot of personal enjoyment out of the ads and can’t resist the opportunity to have Lance in one. But mostly it’s about ensuring Lance’s broad appeal across multiple markets.

A few days before the shoot, Skye receives word that Lance will be appearing in the ad with a model named Raven Darkholme. As far as Skye’s internet research goes, Raven has good popularity with the exact demographic they’re trying to target.

She’s also a couple of inches taller than Lance, although not quite as tall as Bobbi.

“I’m sure you can arrange for a box or something for me to stand on,” Lance replies when she tells him about this. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned, which surprises Skye. He tries not to let it show, but Skye knows he’s well away that there online bloggers making jokes about how much taller than him Bobbi is.

“But where’s the fun in that?” Skye asks, knowing it will set him off.

Maybe she hasn’t completely forgotten about his outburst over her tv viewing attire from last week.

She can tell he’s trying to play it cool, annoyed though he is.

“Skye,” he says after a deep breath, “ I would really appreciate it if you made this as painless for me as possible. I’m already doing extra workouts to prepare for this, could you please do me this one favor?”

Somehow, the extra trips to the gym have escaped Skye’s notice. His body’s damned near perfect, she’s not sure why he feels he needs them. But it’s nice to know his self-esteem isn’t always at one hundred percent.

In the end, Skye arranges for some clever use of staircases to compensate for the height difference between Raven and Lance, and everything foes off without a hitch, except for one tiny little problem.

Skye can’t keep her eyes off Lance.

They’ve got him in a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up and a loose tie hanging form his neck, something Skye has a hard time resisting on any man. She’s not sure what any of that has to do with selling underwear, but she’s too busy trying to hide her staring to ask anyone.

“See anything you like?” Lance asks, when they move on the underwear-only portion of the shoot.

Truth be told, his arms, chest, ass and, for some strange reason, his high muscles all fit the bill. She keeps that to herself, though.

“In your dreams,” she tells him.

“Like you could resist the thought of this,” he gestures up and down his nearly naked body.

Luckily, in her thoughts, she doesn’t have to resist anything. It’s only her words and actions she has to worry about, and she keeps those under control.

Skye rolls her eyes and lays a hand on the side of one of his muscular arms.

“Yet somehow I manage to do it every day,” she says, conveniently leaving out mention of exactly how much effort that requires.

Somehow, Skye manages to make it through the entire day of shooting without saying or doing anything embarrassing. Still, she requires a large amount of whine and a serious venting session with Jemma that night.

“I always knew you were into him,” Jemma remarks, before taking a sip from one of her mismatched wineglasses.

Wine tastings were a big hobby for Skye and Jemma in college and the year before Skye booked her job with the Wards, and Jemma has the tasting glasses to prove it.

“No,” Skye insists, “there’s a big difference between appreciating my boss’s good looks and wanting to screw his brains out. Besides, you’re the one always going on about aesthetic appear and symmetrical features.”

Skye’s okay with admitting her feelings for Lance to herself, but she can’t bring herself to talk about it with anything else. If she keeps quiet, she keeps everything in check. She doesn’t have to worry about acting on her feelings.

“And you’re clearly on the wanting to screw his brains out side of things,” Jemma responds calmly. “This is first time I’ve heard you refer to him as your boss,” she changes the subject.

“Boss, employee, he’s a bit a both,” Skye waves the hand not wrapped around her wineglass in the air for emphasis. “He hates it when I call him my boss, though. He says we’re partners.”

“Life partners?” Jemma raises an eyebrow.

“His relationship with Bobbi implies otherwise.”

“Speaking of Bobbi, what’s she like?” Jemma asks.

Skye knew she would ask that. Skye accidentally mentioned Bobbi’s biochemistry degree in their last phone conversation. Jemma’s probably researched everything about her already. She might know even more than Skye does (not true, Skye did plenty of research into Bobbi when she started dating Lance).

“That’s what sucks,” Skye says, “Bobbi’s great. She’s smart and funny, and she goes out of her way to invite me to hang out with her and Lance more than he ever does. Basically, her only flaw is that most of her roles involve being out of town a lot, which Lance hates.”

Skye can tell that Jemma wants to ask more questions about Bobbi, but she only gives Skye a sympathetic smile and says, “That sounds rough,” before sticking their chosen movie into the DVD player.

Two hours and one therapeutic cry (over the movie, not Lance) later, Skye heads out to her car. Jemma stops her at the front door, though.

“Look,” she says, running a comforting hand along Skye’s arm, “I know this is awful for you, and I know there’s not much you can do about it, but if you need to talk, or just get away for a while, there’s always room for you hear.”

Skye gives Jemma a long hug, she’s not sure what she’s done to deserve such a great friend, but she’s definitely thankful.

\----

Skye finds it odd that, for someone so smitten, the only photo of Bobbi that Lance keeps around is from a photo-shoot for GQ magazine. Yes, it’s a bikini photo-shoot, and yes, she looks totally hot, but Skye would be less surprised to find a shrine devoted to Bobbi in Lance’s closet, than such a huge lack of documentation.

And she’s checked, there isn’t one.

“Why don’t you have any candid photos of Bobbi?” Skye asks, on a day where they’re both home and both very bored.

“I do,” Lance smirks. “They’re just on my phone and not the kind of photos you share with other people.”

The waggle of his eyebrows isn’t necessary for Skye to understand what he’s getting at, but he does it anyway.

“Dude, that’s way too much information,” she tells him, pretending to gag. “I know way too much about your sex life as it is. I don’t need more details.”

“Hey, she’s out of town a lot,” Lance defends himself, getting up from his place on the couch to grab something to eat from the kitchen. “What do you expect us to do? And really, you’re the one who asked. I’m sorry you didn’t get the answer you were expecting. What were you expecting?”

“Secret scrapbook full of heart drawing and the words Mr. Lance Morse written over and over again,” she teases, following him into the kitchen. Then it clicks, “So wait, do you just have naked pictures of her lying around on your phone?”

“Yep,” Lance shrugs.

“Are they at least protected?”

“The phone has a password,” he tells her.

She knows. It’s BOBB. Very secure.

Skye signs in frustration. Of course someone as computer illiterate as Lance would think a password-protected phone is good enough security.

“You’re an idiot,” she tells him, her voice rising. “There are so many ways a hacker could get access to those photos.”

“Skye, you need to calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down. I know she’s not my client, but you could ruin her career if someone got their hands on those pictures.”

She gives him a long lecture on the dangers of sending nude photos, cringing internally every time she thinks about the ones on his phone.

And then she walks him through the process of deleting the photos he already has from the cloud (making sure not to look at them herself, she doesn’t need to know how hot Bobbi’s entire body is, she’s seen the woman in a bikini), and disconnecting his phone from automatically storing them there in the first place.

The whole situation (helping the guy she’s secretly into secure naked photos of his girlfriend, who isn’t her) is so ridiculous it almost makes it less painful, except for the part where it’s actually excruciating. She’s so uncomfortable, she can’t even work up the about to care about all the weird photos of her that Lance keeps on her phone. She’s actually asleep on the couch in some of them. Who takes photos of that?

Skye’s pretty sure this is actual hell, and she has to spend the rest of the day doing unnecessary research into Lance’s next big audition just to keep her thoughts from going to dark places.

But she’ll live, as long as she never has to do anything like this ever again.


	4. Big Mistakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the comments and kudos. This is my first time writing something this long, so I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying it!

Lance and Bobbi’s honeymoon phase lasts for a good eight months, but then things start to wear. All of Bobbi’s movies seem to film out of town, and the distance really gets to Lance, especially when she accepts a role in a new tv show that films in Atlanta.

“You’d tell me if I was being an ass about this, right?” he asks Skye.

The problem is, she has told him he’s being an ass about this. She’s said it politely, and when he continued to whine, she said it bluntly.

And so far he’s just ignored it.

“She’s not cheating on you,” Skye tells him for at least the sixth time.

“But why would she cancel her plans to come home this weekend?” Lance is lying on his back on the couch, in a position that makes Skye feel like this is a therapy session. She did not sign up to be his psychologist.

“Because she had a long week of filming and she needs to catch up on her sleep so she can do another long week of filming without keeling over.” It’s the exact explanation Bobbi gave him over the phone less than two hours ago.

“Are you sure—“ Lance starts, but Skye cuts him off.

“Yes, I’m absolutely sure Bobbi is not cheating on you with her totally hot, but totally gay co-star. And I’m sure she hasn’t forgotten all about you. But if you keep acting like a needy child, you’re going to push her away,” she tells him, hoping it will stick.

And it does, for a little while at least.

The next weekend Lance flied out to see Bobbi. He comes back happy and manages to get through another week of his own filming without any sort of Bobbi-induced freak-out.

And then photos surface of Bobbi out to dinner with her co-star Alphonso Mackenzie. They do look very friendly.

Skye just reminds Lance that it’s an open secret that Mack isn’t into women.

Lance has no reason to be jealous, but that doesn’t stop him from being paranoid about Bobbi finding someone else. Maybe Mack’s not a threat to his relationship, but there are plenty of single guys in Georgia who are.

His solution to this problem is to send Bobbi flowers, lot of flowers. He shows Skye a photo of the arrangement and it’s taller than the florist who made it, maybe even taller than Bobbi herself. Skye thinks it’s a bit much, but at least he didn’t feel the need to fill her entire apartment with roses or something. This actually feels restrained.

The flowers are followed up with a necklace, which Skye warns him not to spend too much money on.

“That’s just emotional blackmail,” she says of his first choice. He takes the hint and sends Bobbi a simple silver necklace, engraved with her name on it.

Then it’s clothes, which Lance drags Skye to the store to pick out.

“I need a woman’s opinion,” he tells her, “so I don’t get anything that sends the wrong message.”

He has a point. This could easily end in diamond-encrusted lingerie if no one’s there to run interference.

In the end, Bobbi gets a very nice sweater, in a shade of blue Skye’s seen her wear a few times before.

The shit hits the fan, though, when Lance flies out to see Bobbi again. He doesn’t feel the need to call or text Skye while he’s gone, and the paparazzi get photos of the couple enjoying a romantic dinner for two. Bobbi’s even wearing the necklace Lance bought for her.

Skye thinks things must be going well.

Then she finds Lance lying on the couch at home at three in the afternoon that Sunday. His flight wasn’t scheduled to get in until a little after seven.

“You’re home early,” Skye remarks. She’s concerned by his presence, but doesn’t want to pry.

“Well,” he mutters angrily, “Bobbi needed some space, so I figured she could have the whole bloody continent.”

On a personal level, Skye feels terrible for Lance. As much as it’s hurt to watch him and Bobbi together, she knows from experience that getting dumped sucks. But as the person responsible for his public image, she needs to know exactly what went down in Atlanta.

“Look,” she takes a spot on the arm of their couch, “in one hour I will switch into best friend mode and listen to you vent about what a terribly person Bobbi is.” She feels bad that she can’t just start there. “But first I need to be in business mode. You didn’t… say anything that might be seen as inappropriate after she broke things off, did you?”

“She didn’t break things off,” Lance insists, loudly.

“But you said—“

“I said she wants space. She’s feeling smothered,” he delivers that last word with malice. “We’re taking a break. She said we can talk about things when she comes back for Thanksgiving, but right now she needs to focus on herself and her career.”

Skye is positive that this is not going to end well. But hopefully this will at least give Lance some time to come to terms with the end of his relationship before it’s actually official.

\----

At first, Lance seems to be handling things really well. Sure, he’s angry with Bobbi, convinced she never loved him as much as he loved her. But at least he’s not moping.

The moping, as it turns out, kicks it at the start of week two. Skye finds him staring at his phone wistfully, presumably looking at photos of Bobbi (she just hopes it’s not the naked ones).

Phrase three sees him brainstorming way to win her back. Skye has to tell him that no, an apology probably won’t fix things right now, and that inundating her with gifts is part of what got him into this mess in the first place.

Skye starts keeping a careful eye on him after he mentions hiring a skywriter. She’s pretty sure he was kidding, but better safe than sorry.

She catches him dialing Bobbi’s number twice, but she manages to rip the phone out of his hands before it starts ringing. That’s when she goes into full babysitting mode. During the day, since he’s not shooting anything, she goes with him everywhere. At night, she makes him hand over his cell phone before he goes to bed.

“This is the opposite of space,” she tells him, the third time he tries to call Bobbi. She doesn’t get to the phone quick enough to keep the call from going through, but she does keep him from leaving a lovesick voicemail.

“What if she’s going that thing that women sometimes do where they say one thing, but they really mean the opposite,” he argues.

Skye crosses her arms, “You’re an idiot.”

\----

When Bobbi comes back for Thanksgiving, Lance is still hopeful for reconciliation. Skye is just hoping she’ll let him down easy. There will probably be tears, Skye’s just hoping they’ll be kept to a minimum.

She convinces Lance that meeting Bobbi at the airport is not a good idea. A few hours later, he gets a text from Bobbi asking him to meet her on Thanksgiving Day at four.

Of course, that’s exactly when Skye’s supposed to be eating Thanksgiving dinner with Jemma and some of their friends.

Lance insists he doesn’t need her there, and despite the nagging feeling that something bad is going to happen, Skye agrees to let him go to Bobbi’s alone.

She feels too much like a babysitter already.

He looks nervous when it’s time for Skye to leave and go to Jemma’s. She offers to stick around for moral support, but he shoves the pie she made (or rather, the pie she bought and moved onto a fancy plate) into her hands and practically pushes her out the door.

At four o’clock, Skye sits down to dinner. She’s just sent Lance a test inviting him to stop by for dessert if he’s free (anything to distract him from the inevitable wallowing), but she’s not surprised that he doesn’t next her back. He’s probably at Bobbi’s having his heart ripped out by that harpy.

(Skye knows Bobbi’s not a harpy, but her sympathy for Lance outweighs rational thought at the moment.)

She’s distracted all the way through dinner, imagining what’s going on at Bobbi’s house. She keeps checking her phone, needing to know what’s happening, and eventually Fitz takes it away from her.

He tells her she can have it back after dinner, and is forces to focus on making polite conversation with Fitz and Anne, one of the other scientists at the lab where he and Jemma work.

At six o’clock, Jemma is in the process of putting dessert out on the table Skye still hasn’t heard a peep from Lance.

Maybe she was wrong, maybe Bobbi did take him back. Maybe they’re at Skye’s house right now, having kinky sex on the floor outside her bedroom.

Or maybe Skye’s right and Bobbi did dump him. And now Lance is drunk in bar somewhere, saying terrible thins about Bobbi to stranger who’s actually an undercover reporter.

The what-ifs just won’t leave her mind, so Skye taps Jemma on the shoulder to excuse herself.

“I have to go check on him, make sure he isn’t doing something stupid,” Skye says after explaining everything to Jemma.

Of course Jemma refuses to let her go without taking a huge plate of desserts.

“Maybe the sugar with help with the heartache,” she says.

Skye arrives home to find Lance lying on his side on the couch. There’s warm six-pack (of cheap beer, not the usual good stuff) sitting on the kitchen table, but the one beer Lance has removed is lying on the coffee table in front of his face. Skye’s not even sure he’s taken a single sip from it.

“You can say you told me so,” Lance tells her after she’s set to dessert plate down on the table. She then moves the beers into the fridge; they’ll probably need them tonight.

“Are you okay?” she asks. She’s put a lot of effort into trying to prepare him for the inevitable dumping, she’s not going to gloat about being right. His misery certainly doesn’t make her feel happy.

“I knew something was wrong when I saw the box of my stuff waiting by her door,” he explains. He doesn’t sound angry or sad, just defeated, practically lifeless. “But I went in anyway. She was kind about it really, did the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ thing. Said she needed to focus on her career and doesn’t have time for a relationship.”

Skye perches on her usual spot on the arm of the couch, hoping this is the last time she has to try and talk him out of full-blown despair.

“Well I’m hear if you want to drink the pain away,” she points to the bottle on the table, “or rant about what a heartless bitch Bobbi is.”

“You hate it when I use the word bitch,” he reminds her, and Skye thinks she can detect the tiniest hint of amusement in his voice.

“It’s a one night only deal.”

It seems to take some effort, but Lance hauls himself up into a sitting position and reaches for the beer.

“Did I ever tell you that her parents hated me?” he takes a long swig from the bottle.

“Really?” Skye hasn’t heard this story before.

“Of course Bobbi insisted that wasn’t true, but I’m not dumb. They thought she was too good for me, wanted her to marry a doctor or a lawyer, not another actor.”

The conversation moves on to the way Bobbi’s dog always licked his face, which Lance hated, and then to her reluctance to introduce him to her friends, and the fact that Bobbi apparently owns an unnecessarily large number of shoes.”

“What does she even need neon pink studded booties for?” he complains. “Where would she wear them?”

Skye ties to think of an appropriate occasion, but she can’t. Maybe Halloween?

“No clue.”

“You’re a good friend,” he tells her after three beers. He lays a hand on her shoulder.

He’s not slurring his words yet, but his eyes look a little glassy. Skye feels about the same.

She looks into his eyes, noticing, not for the first time, what a nice shade of brown they are. Brown in an underrated color.

“A really good friend,” he repeats, and his eyes drop to her lips.

Skye can feel a blush creep up her cheeks and the rest of her body feels warm under his gaze.

The next thing she knows, his lips are on hers. It feels every bit as wonderful as she’d imagined in would, and she’s spent a lot of time imagining it. He pulls gently on her bottom lip with his teeth, then blazes trail of hot kisses down her neck. It’s like he can’t make up his mind, needs to kiss every single inch of her.

A small part of her knows this is a terrible idea, but then her hands slide across his chest, feeling his muscles through the material of his shirt, and she just doesn’t care.

His mouth returns to hers as his hands fumble along her back looking for the zipper of her dress. There isn’t one, but can’t bring herself to pull away to tell him.

Instead, he settles for trying to undo the buttons on his shirt. It’s a little difficult to with her brain so foggy, and she finally pulls away from him to voice her frustrations.

“Fucking buttons,” she mutters, and Lance lets out a small laugh.

He has a sexy laugh.

“Shut up,” she tells him. He kisses her, more deeply this time, and neither one of them is able to say anything more.

She’s got half the buttons on his shirt undone when he takes care of the rest, and the kiss grows more and more frantic. They’re desperate to get as close as possible, and they can’t do that until she gets his damn shirt off.

Skye pulls away again to pulls her dress off over her head, but then they’re pressed up against each other again, a needy mass of mouths and hands and legs.

Slowly, he guides her backwards until her calves hit the side of the couch, and lowers her down onto it.

Technically, they have a house rule against sex on the couch, but neither of them is thinking about that at the moment.

\----

Skye wakes up the next morning disoriented and confused. Why is she on the couch and not in her bed? Where the hell are her clothes? Who’s they guy—“

Shit.

One look at Lance’s sleeping face and it all comes rushing back to her. Coming home to find him so upset, the drinking, the sex.

There’s a part of her that wanted something like this to happen, but not like this, not when he’s still so desperately in love Bobbi, not when she’s just an excuse to ignore his feelings for a while.

Careful not to wake him, and desperate to avoid and kind of confrontation, Skye disentangles herself from Lance. Quietly, she searches for her clothes and dumps them on the floor of her room.

She doesn’t think she’ll ever want to wear them again. They’d just be a reminder of getting what she wanted in the worst way possible. She considers burning them, completely erasing any evidence of what happened, but that seems rash. Maybe she’ll just donate them; someone should benefit from her colossal mistake.

Skye showers and puts on clothes and gets out the door in record time. She doesn’t want to be there when Lance wakes up, she’s not ready to hear him admit it was a mistake, even though she knows it was.

She’ll have to talk to him at some point, she knows. They work together, they live together, they’re friends. At least she hopes they’re still friends.

But before she can contemplate something as big as that, she’s going to need coffee. So her first stop is Starbucks, which she normally hates. The long line sounds like the beginning of a fitting punishment.

After she’s sufficiently caffeinated, Skye decides the next appropriate form of torture is Black Friday shopping. She’s got a list of gift ideas sitting on her phone (there’s nothing next to Lance’s name, he’s usually hard to shop for—but that might not matter anyway. For all she knows, he’s in the process of firing her and moving all of her possessions out of the house) and she needs to be distracted.

She calls Jemma. Jemma likes to talk, and she’s great at it. And right now, Skye would gladly listen to a detailed description of Jemma’s dissections, as long as it keeps her from thinking about last night.

In the end, Skye has to promise to help Jemma finish cleaning her apartment later that day, and agree to take half of the leftover, but Jemma does agree to meet her at the mall.

Skye is sitting in the food court, eating a cinnamon bun and waiting for Jemma to arrive when her phone rings. Lance’s smiling face stares at her from the screen, a large alligator puppet covering one arm. She took it on a Make a Wish visit he did a few month ago.

She lets the call go to voicemail, which he doesn’t leave, then she shoots him a quick text.

_Black Friday shopping and errands with Jemma. Won’t be back til after dinner._

At least she’s bought herself a few hours to come with a way to fix this. She doesn’t think she’ll have much success.

They’re looking at shoes (at least Jemma’s looking at shoes, Skye’s totally distracted), when Jemma turns to Skye with a look of concern.

“Are you okay?’ she asks.

“Fit as a fiddle,” Skye responds. Maybe that was overkill.

“Skye I’ve been talking about the mating habits of fruit flies for the last twenty minutes and you haven’t even noticed, much less started teasing me about it,” Jemma tells her.

Caught red handed.

“Is this about Lance and Bobbi?” Jemma continues. “Did they get back together?”

No Jemma, this is about something much worse than that, Skye thinks to herself.

“No,” she replies. “She dumped him.”

“Then what’s wrong? That sounds like something you should be over the moon about.”

Skye resents the notion that she should be excited about Lance’s breakup (especially when she has yet to admit her feelings for him out loud), but she doesn’t say anything.

“Listen,” she begins, “I’d really rather not talk about it right now.”

“But you are ready to talk, you’ll come to me, right?” Skye appreciates that Jemma doesn’t seem to be pushing the issue. She still needs time to process everything.

“Of course I will,” Skye says, and she means it. Chatty though she may be at times, Jemma is a great listener whenever Skye needs one.

Jemma nods, content with Skye’s response. Then she smiles brightly and holds up a pair of black leather boots.

“In that case, what do you think about these?” she asks. “The heel’s not exactly lab appropriate, but I think they’d be great for going out. That’s actually going to be my New Years Resolution this year, or one of them. Less drinking at home, more drinking in public while wearing cute clothes.”

Thank god for friends who know when to change the subject.

“I like those. What’s the other resolution?” Skye asks.

“Talk to more men who aren’t Fitz. Talk to more people who aren’t Fitz, really.”

“You talk to me,” Skye points out.

“Well then I guess I’m off to a good start, then,” Jemma grins.

When Skye gets home that night, she takes it as a good sign that none of her stuff is waiting out at the curb. Lance hasn’t changed the locks, either.

He is, however, waiting for her in the kitchen.

“Where have you been all day?” he asks when he sees her. He doesn’t seem angry, just worried.

“Out with Jemma. We couldn’t miss out on all the Black Friday deals,” she’s managed to fake a decent amount of enthusiasm, but Skye can tell her doesn’t actually believe her. “I sent you a text.”

“I got it. About last night,” Lance cuts to the chase.

At least he tries to. Skye put a lot of thought into this while she was helping Jemma clean, and she came to a decision. The best way to deal with what happened is to not deal with what happened at all.”

So she cuts him off, “Listen, it’s been a long day. Jemma made me crawl around on the floor with the vacuum to get under the sofa, and right now I just want to put on pajamas and crash.”

He looks confused, “So you don’t wanna talk about—“

“Tomorrow I’m going to call Felix and we’ll decide how we’re going to process regarding the breakup. Personally, I think the best thing to do is just not talk about. Bobbi flies back to Georgia on Sunday, and you leave for the Face My Enemy press tour on Tuesday. You’re both busy; everyone will understand why you’re not spotted together. And if the press figures things out sooner rather than later, then we’ll deal with it. But for now, you just politely deflect any questions about her and pretend everything is normal.”

It’s a bit of a rant, but he gets the hint that she has no intention of talking about what happened last night, and he stops bringing it up.

“There’s leftover Thanksgiving dinner on that plate,” she tells him, not sure if he’s eaten yet. “I know you didn’t get any yesterday.”

The double entendre hurts as it leaves her mouth, but she ignores it and heads for her room. Hopefully she’ll feel better in the morning.


	5. Moving Forward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the lovely reviews and kudos. They mean so much.

To say that things are awkward between Skye and Lance is an understatement. They’re overly polite with each other, even at home, apologizing for everything. They rarely even see each other; Skye’s focused on keeping a lid on the breakup, and Lance is being fitted for suits for the press tour. They eat dinner on their own, going out their way to not be in the same room together whenever possible.

The first stop of Lance’s press tour is Shanghai, which means they’re stuck next to each other for a thirteen-hour flight. The first ten hours involve studiously avoiding each other. Skye answers business emails, watches movies, and takes a couple of short, unsatisfying naps. Lance takes a sleeping pill as soon as the plane takes off, and conks out for ten hours.

He takes the sleeping pill with a tiny bottle of champagne, and Skye’s too committed to avoiding awkward conversations to yell at him about it.

But when he wakes up with a stiff neck, Lance is forced to talk to her.

He taps on her shoulder, and she removes the noise cancelling headphones he bought her months ago. She considered not packing them, but they making flying so much easier and that just seemed petty.

“Please tell me you have some kind of painkillers in that giant bag of yours,” he sounds desperate.

But ten hours of sitting in the same spot has made Skye a little irritable.

“Maybe if you remembered that neck pillow I bought you, you wouldn’t be in so much pain,” she snaps, although she’s already digging around in her purse for the tiny bottle of aspirin she remembers throwing in there.

“It wouldn’t fit in my bag,” he counters. “Unlike you, I didn’t bring something big enough to store a dead body in.”

Okay, maybe Skye’s carry-on is on the large side, but she didn’t have any trouble fitting it in the overhead compartment.

“How else could I pack all your toys, and rattles, and diapers,” she teases. She is, after all, his babysitter.

It’s not the best joke she’s ever made, but they both dissolve into a fit of giggles loud enough that the man sitting in front of Lance turns around to glare at them. Lance makes a rude gesture in return.

In terms of reconciliation, it’s not perfect, but it’s a start. At least they’re saying more than two syllables to each other at a time.

“Ow. shit,” Lance gasps, after moving his neck the wrong way. Skye stops laughing and finishes fishing the aspirin out of her purse.

“Take this with water,” she instructs him, “or at least soda.”

He twists open his complimentary bottle of water, and chases the pills with it.

“You’re a lifesaver,” he tells her. She knows. “What would I do without you.”

“Trust me, I’ve lost a lot of sleep thinking about that exact situation.”

“Never leave me,” he’s joking, mostly, but Skye thinks she detects a hint of worry in his voice.

“I couldn’t,” she tells him. “You pay my bills and own the house I live in. I’d have nowhere else to go.”

“There’s always Jemma’s couch,” he suggests.

“I think there are needles stuck in that thing, it’s terrible to sleep on. I guess I’ll have to stick with you for now.”

\----

Of course things don’t go back to normal overnight. Lance continues to pine over Bobbi, and Skye considers duct taping his moth closed so she doesn’t hear it. But it because tolerable. She thinks of it as conditioning; the more she listens to him talk about Bobbi, the easier it is for her to shove her own feelings into a box and pretend they don’t exist.

And that’s better for everyone.

But all that progress is put in jeopardy on the second to last night of the European leg of the press tour. Skye is lounging in bed after accompanying Lance to a round of interviews. She’s nibbling on a croissant and watching cat videos on YouTube when one of her Google alerts goes off. Specifically, it’s the alert she has on Bobbi Morse.

Bobbi’s been spotted in New York, doing some Christmas shopping with Olympic archer Clint Barton. And that Christmas shopping involves a lot of handholding.

Skye’s first thought is that it really wouldn’t have killed Felix Blake, Bobbi’s publicist, to give her a heads up about this. She knew something like this would happen, but she’d expected it to be more than a few weeks before it did.

Her second thought is that this is going to send Lance back to square one. And square one (moping, not trimming his beard, refusing to leave his bed) is not going to work when he still has four more premieres to attend.

At least he’s already finished the bulk of his interviews for the day. All that’s left is the premiere.

Which means Skye has just over three hours to break the news, break his heart, and put it together enough to withstand a round of rapid-fire red carpet interviews.

She’s totally screwed.

Nevertheless, Skye gets out of bed, puts on her shoes (slippers really, but she’s not going far) and makes her way down the hall to Lance’s room.

She doesn’t want to knock on the door, but she does. Lance answers it looking upset, but seeing as how he’s actually functional enough to answer the door in the first place, she assumes he hasn’t heard yet.

Until he holds up his phone to show her a photo of Bobbi with her hand stuck into Clint Barton’s back pocket.

“I expected you at least ten minutes ago,” he says.

“And I expected you to be crying,” he’s taking this much better than she expected, so Skye can’t resist the joke.

“Maybe later,” he replies, and Skye can’t tell if he’s being serious or not, “but I knew this was bound to happen. Right now I only have room for shock and panic. What d’you think the chances are of no one asking about this tonight?”

“A million to one,” Skye answers honestly.

“Then let’s decide what I’m saying about it,” he ushers Skye into the room and closes the door behind her.

They opt for a less is more approach to the Bobbi situation. Lance will deflect any questions about their breakup as best as he can, saying only that there are no hard feelings (a lie) and that he wishes her the best (slowly but surely becoming less of a lie). Skye decides not to call Bobbi’s publicists and tell him off for not warning her about this in advance.

The premiere is successful, Lance smiles and takes photos with fans, and the next morning they move onto London. There’s a day off before tomorrow’s media circus, which Skye devotes to prepping Lance for all the awkward questions he’s bound to be asked.

She’s pretty sure he’ll make it through. After all, he never did end up crying yesterday (as far as Skye’s aware).

The first round of interviews the next morning foes well. Lance politely refuses to discuss the detail of the break up, repeats over and over again how he wishes Bobbi nothing but the best, and expertly directs the conversation back to the movie he’s there to promote. Skye’s proud of him for it.

Of course, not all journalists can be as professional as Lance is.

Louis Boulanger is from some TMZ-equivalent gossip website. Lance gives him the same polite responses he’s given every other interviewer, along with a funny anecdote about Melinda May accidentally shooting him with rubber bullets on the set of his first movie (no permanent damage, but Skye had never seen such a terrible bruise), but the guy won’t stop pushing.

Skye’s actually glad when he starts asking Lance is he’s seeing anyone new.

“No,” Lance replies, still perfectly courteous, although Skye can see his shoulders relax a little with this new topic of conversation, “I don’t really have the time.”

“Bobbi Morse seems to have the time,” this asshole just won’t stop pushing for more information on Bobbi. Skye’s ready to deck him herself, she can only imagine how Lance feels.

But all he says in return is, “Bobbi’s not in the middle of a worldwide press tour.” And he manages to say in a friendly tone.

It’s not the ideal response, but Skye’s not going to complain.

“What about her?” the Mr. Boulanger points to Skye. “You two seem quite friendly.”

If Lance is surprised by the question (and Skye sure as hell is), he doesn’t show it. He just chuckles a little before responding, “Skye? Oh no, we’re not together. She’s my best friend slash publicist slash roommate slash babysitter. She’s way out of my league.”

Not only is that an amazing answer from a PR standpoint, but Skye is also incredibly flattered.

Still, the interviewer looks at her expectantly, as if he wants her response as well.

“Trust me, I know way to much weird shi—stuff,” she corrects herself, “about him to ever think of him like that.”

She’s actually taken to reviewing all of that weird stuff in her head whenever her inconvenient feelings pop up. It’s a great coping mechanism.

“You totally love my weird stuff, though,” Lance says smoothly, directing the conversation back to him so he can get a few in about the movie.

But her love for his weird stuff is not important.

\----

London, and New York, and LA all off without a hitch, although Skye and Lance are so excited to sleep in their own beds again that they oversleep a bit for the LA interviews and have to scramble to get ready.

Hopefully Lance’s next movie doesn’t require this much promotion.

Skye flies home to Virginia to spend Christmas with her dad. Lance opts to spend the holidays on the beach in Hawaii with some guy friends. He even invites Fitz, and part of Skye wishes she could be there to see. That part is quickly drowned out by opportunity to spend some quality time with her dad, Phil, a high school principal. She hasn’t gotten to see him since before she started working with Lance.

Skye’s dad insists that they drive around one night to look at people’s Christmas decorations, but Skye’s able to talk him out of booking at actual horse-drawn sleigh ride. They do their annual tradition of Christmas morning presents, a movie, and Chinese food for dinner. Lucky for her, Lance’s vacation goes unnoticed by the paparazzi, so she’s able to enjoy her trip home to the fullest.

Christmas in Virginia is the perfect detox from LA, and Skye flies home at the end of the month feeling refreshed. The boys stay in Hawaii until January, so Skye and Jemma ring in the New Year at Skye’s house. Jemma even sleeps in on the guest rooms, which don’t nearly as much use as they should.

Lance comes back with a tan and a bunch of nice things to say about Fitz, who apparently managed to get rid of some photographers lurking about on their last night of vacation.

Skye and Lance fall back into their usual routine. He films in LA, except for a two-week jaunt to Ireland, which Skye doesn’t feel the need to join him for. In February, she even decides that Lance’s life is calm enough that she and Jemma can take a couple weeks off for their own vacation.

It’s the first real vacation (Christmas with her dad doesn’t count) that Skye’s taken since she started working for Lance, and it’s a dream. They eat and drink their way from Rome to Venice and Skye vows to take more time off from work in the future. After all, southern California has plenty of great views; she doesn’t even need to spend half a day on a plane to see them.

Of course, Lance is up to his usual shenanigans as soon as she gets back home.

 _Don’t be mad_ , he texts her at nearly 5AM the morning after she gets back. Thanks to some sleeping pills, Skye slept for most of the journey back from Italy, so her internal clock is completely screwed up. She’s only just gone to bed for the night.

 _Don’t be mad about what?_ She texts back. She should be more worried than she currently is, but the exhaustion is overriding her common sense.

_I may have gotten into a small fight at the bar._

None of Skye’s Google alerts have gone off, but she does a quick search for Lance’s name on her phone just to be sure she doesn’t miss anything, but it’s all quiet.

 _Come home now. We’ll deal with this in the morning,_ she tells him, then promptly falls back asleep. Even if the media does get wind of this, no one’s expecting a response at this hour.

She’s vaguely aware of the door slamming shut about thirty minutes later, followed by the sounds of Lance getting something to drink in the kitchen.

He’s not screaming in pain, though, or knocking on her door, so she decides it can wait until morning. After all, he’s got a professional makeup artist to take care of him at work, they can handle a few bruises no problem.

Skye finally wakes up at 11, after a lengthy battle with her snooze button.

“Are you decent?” she knocks on Lance’s bedroom door.

“I’m asleep,” he sounds annoyed by her interruption.

Now he knows how it feels.

“Well I’m coming in, so you’d better cover up anything you don’t want me to see.”

She pushes open the door to find Lance lying on top of the covers in a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. She doesn’t immediately notice any bruises, so she moves in for a closer look.

A quick inspection of his face and hands reveals not a single scratch.

“Must have been one hell of a fight,” she remarks drily and she flips the switch on his bedside lamp.

He quickly throws an arm over his face to block out the light. 

“It was a very small fight,” he tells her, still not fully awake.

“How small?”

“Some guy called me a douche and I flipped him off when he turned around. I was too busy being Fitz’s wingman to give him my full attention.”

“And then?” Skye asks.

“He got her number.”

Skye sighs. That was not the question she wanted answered,” And what part of that warranted waking me up at five in the morning?”

He shrugs, at least Skye thinks that’s what he’s doing. It looks a bit like a weird full body twitch because he’s lying down, “I missed you.”

Skye snorts. She’s too tired to be flattered, “I was gone for two weeks.”

“Fifteen days,” he corrects her.

“I hope you’re hungover,” is Skye’s final response, yelled over her shoulder as she exits the room. He doesn’t cringe, though, she he’s probably fine.

\----  
The Lance Hunter: Jackass Extraordinaire train leaves the station periodically over the next few months. Notably, at the end of March when Skye and a bunch of friends go out for dinner. Lance is sleeping off a night shoot, she he doesn’t go, but he’s sitting in the living room when Trip comes to pick Skye up.

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” is the first thing Lance says when Skye lets Trip into the house.

“He’s not a bodyguard,” Skye corrects him as she throws her jacket on.

Trip looks unimpressed.

“I don’t need a personal trainer, either,” Lance says to Skye, continuing to act like Trip can’t hear them.

“At least I can take that one as a compliment,” Trip remarks.

“Lance, this is Trip,” Skye adopts her most condescending babysitting voice. “He is a friend. He is not a bodyguard or a personal trainer. He own the Hub Café by the lab where Jemma and Fitz work.”

“Cheers,” Lance finally says something directly to Trip.

Skye quickly pulls Trip out the front door before Lance can make an even bigger ass of himself.

“So how was your date?” Lance asks when Skye gets back later that night.

“Not a date. Trip’s just a friend,” Skye says, although she thought she made that clear already.

“A special friend? A sexy friend?” Lance winks conspiratorially. 

“No, just a friend,” she almost adds ‘like me and you,’ but thinks better of it. “We went to dinner with Jemma, Fitz, Donnie, Seth, and Callie.”

Lance doesn’t let the Trip thing go, no matter how many times Skye insists things are purely platonic.

“Alright, you got me,” Skye finally says, just to shut Lance up. “We didn’t meet everyone for dinner.”

“Really? I knew it,” he sounds so proud of himself.

“We went to a seedy motel and had sex,” Skye expertly holds back her laughter. “I mean, it wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it was actually pretty hot. There was even one of those vibrating bed. Between the shaking and this thing Trip does with his tongue where he—“

“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” Lance cuts her off.

Skye just continues, “I always thought Prince Albert piercings were kind of gross, but they actually feel really good.”

“Okay, now you’re definitely fucking with me,” Lance says, although he doesn’t sound completely sure. “There’s no way that guy has a piercing down there. He wore a suit to dinner.”

Skye shrugs, “He came from the bank. He wants to expand his café. If you’re really curious about his piercings, I’m sure he’d be down for a three-way.”

Skye’s not sure how she manages to get the threesome offer out of her mouth without cracking up, but Lance pales at the thought of it. Then he flips Skye off, finally sure that she’s just messing with him. At least he’s not still insisting that Skye’s dating Trip.

\----

When Lance calls Skye to tell her that he’s gotten a tattoo, Skye thinks she might have to hire an actual babysitter for him.

He won’t send her a photo of it, he won’t tell her what it’s of, or where it is on his body, or even how big it is. All he’ll tell her is that he’s sure she’ll love it.

She’s sure she’ll murder him if he keeps these stunts up. It’s like he enjoys her misery.

Of course Lance, for whatever reason, chooses that night to sleep at Fitz’s. He says it’s because he drank too much while they were watching football (the British football, not the American kind), but when Skye suggests he take a cab home, he hangs up on her.

So she’s pretty sure this is all a ploy to make her lose her mind. He probably doesn’t even have a tattoo.

Or he does and it’s huge and he knows Skye is going to murder him. Or he does and it’s on his forehead and he knows Skye is going to murder him. Or he does and it’s a picture of Bobbi and he knows she’s going to fly across the country and help Skye murder him.

The possibilities are endless and generally terrible.

When he finally gets home around two in the afternoon, clothes rumpled like he’s returning from a one-night stand, Skye has compiled a mental list of every awful tattoos possibility.

She practically tackles him at the door, but all she can confirm is that there’s no tattoo on his forehead. However, there are still plenty of ways for him to piss her off.

“Where is it?” she asks.

“Good to see you too, Skye,” he stalls. “I’m fine, thanks for asking. Had a great time with Fitz.”

Skye just crosses her arms and glares at him. She is in no mood for these games.

“Fine,” he huffs, and turns so his back is facing her. Then he lifts up the back of his shirt.

On the back of his right hip, just above the waistline of his jeans, is a tiny tattoo of a knife. As far as tattoos go, this one is harmless. It’s definitely not worth all the time Skye spent agonizing over it.

Still, he has to pay for inflicting that on her.

“You got an ass tattoo,” Skye states.

“What? No,” Lance looks over his shoulder to glare at her.

Skye pokes next to the tattoo, careful not to actually touch it. It’s still red and she’s aiming for mental warfare, not the infliction of physical pain.

“This is your ass,” she tells him. “There is a tattoo on it.”

He turns to face her, “That is my hip.”

“Ass.”

“I would never.”

“But you did,” Skye declares herself the victor in this fight, but can’t resist getting on last jab in. “Is it because you’re such a pain in the ass?”

“No, actually it’s for Izzy,” he says solemnly. “She had a similar on.”

Skye’s face drops. Lance doesn’t talk about Izzy much. All Skye really knows is that she was on old friend of his who died in a car accident that gave Lance the final push to move out to LA.

And now Skye feels like the jerk. If she hadn’t made that pain in the ass comment, she would have won this round. But now she’s definitely lost.

Lance is still an ass for teasing her like he did, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sixth and final chapter is written, I will have it up some time on Thursday.


	6. A Familiar Situation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your comments and kudos. I never in a million years thought I'd be able to write something this long, and your support made it a lot easier.
> 
> Enjoy!

“Remind me again what I’m doing awake,” Lance whines as he slides in across the booth from Skye.

“We’re taking advantage of your day off,” Skye explains, stirring sugar and cream into her coffee.

“And that couldn’t involve me sleeping in because?” Lance trails off.

“Because I said so,” is Skye’s justification.

“Not a good enough reason,” he shakes his head.

Ignoring her coffee for a moment, Skye leans over the table and grabs either side of Lance’s face.

“You are pathetic,” she tells him in a light tone. “I let you sleep in until nine and you’re still acting like a baby.”

“Am not,” Lance counters, and Skye can’t help but feel that he’s essentially proven her point.

She smushes his cheeks together into a fish face for her own amusement.

“You get up earlier then this to film,” she points out, letting go of his face and sitting back in her seat.

“Yes, but that usually comes with better financial compensation,” he tells her, “so unless you want to pay me…”

“I’d rather deal with the whining,” she says.

They both sip at their coffees in relative silence. Lance isn’t as exhausted as he’s pretending to be, but he still would have preferred a later wake up time. And Skye’s not as awake as she’s trying to come across, so she’s counting on a heavy dose of caffeine to get her there.

“So what exactly are our plans for today?” Lance asks as Skye leans back to pour the last bit of her coffee into her mouth.

“You’ll see,” she grins, knowing how the suspense will eat at him. Then she stands up and grabs his arm to pull him out of the coffee shop. He throws their paper cups into the first garbage can they pass and allows her to direct him to her car.

Somehow they’ve both failed to notice the small group of teenage girls a few tables over from where they were sitting, armed with cell phone cameras and excited expressions.

Skye’s plans for the day are a long hike in the mountains, because they both need some kind of exercise that doesn’t take place in a stuffy gym, and a relaxing trip to the beach. Lance protests the beach part, when Skye promises him he can lay out and take a nap on a beach towel, he’s much more agreeable.

Both the mountains and the beach have terrible cell reception (it’s a break from the hustle and bustle of their usual lives, and part of the reason Skye chose them for this outing), so they’re halfway home before Skye’s google alerts and text messages start coming in.

She’s driving, though, and doesn’t trust Lance with the password to her phone (not after seeing how careless he is with his), so she doesn’t get the chance to look at them until her car is parked in the garage.

She opens her web browser to check her alerts as she enters the house, and they’re all links to articles with some variation of ‘Lance Hunter Spotted on Date with Mystery Woman’ for a title.

Lance has been a completely homebody lately, though, opting for Netflix marathons on the couch rather than bar hopping. Skye honestly has to idea who this mystery woman could possibly be. She opens one of the articles to get a look at her.

The mystery woman, as it turns out, is Skye.

The photos were taken earlier that day, in the coffee shop. The image quality is terrible, so they clearly weren’t taken by the zoom lenses of some paparazzo. Skye is leaning over the table with her hands squeezing Lance’s cheeks together. They’re both laughing. There are a few more at the end of the article of her grabbing Lance’s arm and leading him out of the coffee shop.

As far as compromising, secret relationship photos go, this is harmless. It doesn’t even warrant as response. There are enough photos of her standing to the side of Lance at various events and premieres that soon someone will recognize that she’s his publicist. It’ll all blow over by the time she wakes up tomorrow morning.

Skye’s only real concern is the infatuated look on her face in most of the photos. She thought she’d gotten pretty good and tamping down on her feelings for Lance, but maybe they’ve just been manifesting in other ways, like her making googly eyes every time she looks at him. She’ll have to pay better attention from now on.

Skye shows Lance the articles and they both have a nice laugh about it. She texts Jemma and Trip to let them know that no, she’s not dating Lance, and then she texts her father to let me know that no, he most definitely does not need to have a private word with her client about his intentions with Skye.

It must be a slow news cycle, though, because it doesn’t blow over. The next day, all the celebrity news outlets are running stories about how Lance Hunter is dating his publicist. Skye even reads an article that uses the phrase “dipping his pen in the company ink.”

Ew.

Admittedly, Skye starts to panic a bit. She’s always been a private person, as much as she can be in her job, and she knows that if this keeps up it will only be a matter of time before the press starts digging into her past.

When Lance gets home that evening to find Skye on her computer, frantically refreshing a bunch of different gossip sites, he knows that something is wrong.

“They’re still running stories about us,” Skye explains when she asks her what’s got her all worked up.

“They run stories all the time,” he still doesn’t see how this is a big deal.

“About you, not about me,” Skye practically yells out of pent-up frustration.

Lance can tell there’s more to the story, so he throws his jacket onto an armchair and takes a seat next to Skye on the couch.

“And that’s the end of the world because…” he prompts, moving in closer to look at her computer screen.

“I was adopted,” Skye blurts out.

Lance didn’t know that. Skye’s never mentioned a mother, but he always assumed she either died or skipped town when Skye was little.

“Okay,” he says. He still doesn’t see how Skye being adopted is a big deal, but he’s not adopted so maybe there’s something going over his head.

“When I was three, my mother died and my father gave me up,” she elaborates. “He was… not a great guy. I was in the foster care system until I was twelve, when my dad, Phil,” she clarifies exactly which dad she’s referring to, “adopted me.”

Lance nods, “And you don’t want to whole world to know about that.”

Skye gulps, “A middle aged man adopts a pre-teen girl and people start to talk. Even the state was suspicious when he first said he wanted me. Eventually we moved to a new town in another part of the state so we could start fresh.”

“And you don’t want to go through that again,” now that he has the full story, it makes complete sense to Lance.

“I don’t want to go through that again, and I especially don’t want my dad to go through that again. He sacrificed enough the first time,” she explains.

As if on cue, Skye’s phone starts buzzing. Lance can see a picture of Skye’s dad light up on the screen.

He waits quietly while Skye talks to her dad.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she says into the phone. “I told you, he’s just a friend and a client. That’s not necessary. That’s ridiculous. Dad. Dad, no. I’m an adult, you don’t get to do this. Fine.”

At that last word, she holds the phone out to Lance.

“He wants to talk to you,” she doesn’t sound happy about it. She mouths the words ‘I’m sorry’ as Lance takes the phone from her.

“Hello sir,” Lance answers the phone. Whatever Mr. Coulson wants to say to him, it’s probably not great, so Lance figures it’s best to start off as polite as possible.

“Are you dating my daughter?” Mr. Coulson cuts to the chase.

“No sir.”

“Are you having sex with my daughter?”

Lance chokes a little, but he manages to respond with what he thinks is a pretty convincing, “No sir.” 

It’s not really a lie. They aren’t having sex. It’s been months since that happened and Skye refuses to even acknowledge it.

“If you do anything to hurt my daughter, you’d better watch out. I may only be a high school principal, but rest assured that I will make your life a living hell,” Mr. Coulson doesn’t mince words.

Lance gives Skye a hesitant smile and takes the phone to his room to continue the conversation. Skye doesn’t need to hear this.

“Mr. Coulson,” he begins, “Skye is my closest friend. If anyone hurt her, you wouldn’t need to lift a finger because I’ll have already taken care of it.” It’s a bit over the top, but Mr. Coulson seems like a hard sell. “And just so you know, you’re the one Skye’s worried about in all of this.”

“How so?” Skye’s father asks.

Lance knows he really shouldn’t be discussing this, but if it takes even the smallest weight off of Skye’s shoulders, then he has to.

“She said that, when you adopted her, there were some people who weren’t happy about a single man taking in a teenage girl. She said you ended up moving to get away from it.”

“And she’s afraid word will get out and it will all flare up again,” Mr. Coulson guesses.

“Yes.”

There’s a pause in the conversation and Lance imagines Mr. Coulson is considering the situation.

“I’m a grown man,” he eventually tells Lance. “The last time this happened, I had a twelve year old to worry about. Whatever happens, I can handle it.”

“Okay.”

“I’m counting on you to make sure she gets through this,” he tells Lance.

“Of course.”

“And to let me know if I need to come up and take care of her myself.”

Lance can’t imagine that being necessary, Skye will get through this. But he promises to call if he needs to and even offers to pay for Mr. Coulson’s flight out. Then Mr. Coulson wishes him a good night and hangs up.

“He’s worried about you,” Lance states the obvious as he sits back down next to Skye and hands her the phone.

“I know,” she says, curling up against Lance. She sounds distant, completely overwhelmed.

They sit like that for a while. Every time Lance shifts his position a little, Skye clings to him harder. Eventually, he grabs a blanket and throws it over them before turning on the tv and starting up Netflix.

They fall asleep like that like that, Skye curled up against Lance’s chest and his arm wrapped around her. When he wakes up the next morning, he hates to leave her in such a fragile state. But he knows the thought of him ditching work for her will just make Skye more upset, so her rearranged the blanket to cover her better and gets ready to drive to set.

\----

When Skye wakes up a few hours later, she can’t help but be reminded of waking up in a similar situation a few months ago. Granted, she’s still got her clothes on this time, but it’s still too close for comfort.

All the feelings she’s kept under lock and key since November bubble up to the surface. Those feelings, coupled with her fear of her past coming back to bite her and her father in the ass, are just too much to handle.

She needs to get away.

She can barely think straight as she throws her laptop and some clothes into a bag. She’s purely motivated by the pressing need to leave. She can’t breathe in this house, not with Lance’s constant presence, which lingers even when he’s elsewhere. She’s always walking on eggshells, trying not to trigger her own attraction to him.

She doesn’t even remember to call Jemma until she’s parked outside her friend’s building. Jemma answers on the third ring, though, despite being at work.

She may not be able to completely comprehend Skye’s rapid-fire explanation of exactly what’s happened in the last few days, but she can hear Skye’s desperation loud and clear. Jemma directs Skye to let herself in using the key hidden under the potted plant two doors down and promises to leave work as soon as possible.

Jemma gets home just after five to find Skye asleep on the couth. She changes her clothes and settles into the recliner just in time to Skye to wake up.

“I fucked up,” Skye announces as soon as she remembers where she is and why she came.

“You didn’t sleep with him again, did you?” Jemma asks, concerned.

“No,” Skye insists. “Not the way you mean. All we did was actually sleep.”

Skye launches into an explanation of the past few days, slower this time, starting at the café and ending with her waking up on the couch this morning.

“I thought I was doing so well at the not having feelings for him thing, but now I’m totally screwed,” she adds as an afterthought.

Jemma considers her words carefully, “Skye, you were never doing a great job of hiding your feelings.”

“What?” She’d been so sure.

“Even Fitz mentioned it,” Fitz also mentioned some other things regarding Skye and Lance’s relationship, but this neither the time nor the place for that.

“What do I do?” Skye crumples even further into the couch.

“Do you want advice or do you want sympathy?” It’s a serious question coming from Jemma, who sometimes gives Skye one when all she really wants is the other.

“Sympathy,” Skye decides. “Maybe advice tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Jemma nods, “and what do you want for dinner?”

They agree on subs and Jemma runs out to get them and pick up some ice cream.

While she’s gone, Skye changes out of yesterday’s clothes and splashes some water on her face. It makes her feel marginally more like a human being.

When Jemma returns with their food, Skye tears into her meatball sub like she hasn’t eaten in weeks. They quickly move onto movies and ice cream, settling on a romantic comedy they’ve both already seen. That way, no one’s bothered when they have to stop it every few minutes so that Skye can vent about how screwed over she is by her own feelings while Jemma pats her back sympathetically.

Lance sends a text asking where she is, just before nine. Skye responds that she’s having girls’ night at Jemma’s, but calls anyway.

She ignores it. Last time he back off at this point. This time he calls Jemma.

Skye tells her to let it go to voicemail, but Jemma answers the call and walks into her bedroom.

When she returns a few minutes later, Skye asks what Lance had to say.

“He asked if you were okay,” Jemma reports. “Then wanted to know if you were upset about your father or if it was something he did. I told him it was about you, and he backed off. But I don’t think he’s going to accept that answer for long.”

Skye decides she’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it. Jemma’s bought her some time to figure things out, and she’s going to use some of that time to watch more movies and move from ice cream to popcorn.

\----

Skye wakes up the next morning still desperate to avoid going home. Jemma indulged her with sugar and movies last night, but they never touched on how to deal with Skye’s feelings for Lance and the sticky situations she keeps getting herself into.

And besides, she packed another day’s worth of clothing. She doesn’t need to go home yet.

 

It’s Saturday, which means Jemma has the day off of work. It also means she has a long list of errands to run, but they figure getting out of the house might help them think better.

Unfortunately, Lance has Saturdays off as well, which means it’s more obvious now that she’s avoiding him.

His first text message, asking if she’s okay, gets sent while Jemma is paying for her dry cleaning. Skye responds that she’s fine. It’s not even eleven yet; she’s surprised he’s even awake.

Forty-five minutes later, he texts to ask if she’s coming home today. Skye honestly doesn’t know. They’ve made more progress with Jemma’s grocery list than Skye’s romantic woes, but she can’t tell him that. She doesn’t respond.

When they stop for lunch, Jemma forces the conversation onto the Lance situation. They determine that since ignoring her feelings isn’t working at all, Skye needs to move out and get some space, quit working with Lance, or confess her feelings.

Skye doesn’t have high hopes for option three, but Jemma’s insistent on her thinking about it, like options one and two aren’t bad enough. Skye promises Jemma can help her with pro and cons lists when they get home.

Lance’s next text moves on from the subject of her coming home, instead asking if she DVRed last nights episode of T.R.A.C.K.S. She forgot to, but she tells him it should be up on demand by now.

The rest of his text messages are like that, meaningless questions like where she buys that coffee they both like (he just finished off the last bag), if she’s seen his green jacket, and if she remembered to make that appointment to get her tires rotated.

She and Jemma have already finished a late dinner (That) by the time Lance brings up her coming home again.

She texts him back saying that she’s too tired to come home tonight. He’ll know it’s a bullshit excuse, but he’s probably already figured out that all her excuses have been bullshit.

An hour later, Jemma’s doorbell rings. She and Skye look at each other, there’s really only one person it could be. Jemma gets up to check the peephole.

“Lance,” Jemma confirms when she opens the door, “what brings you here?” If she’s trying not to sound suspicious, then she’s failing. But Skye’s not surprised, Jemma’s always been a terrible liar.

“Can I talk to Skye?” he asks.

“I… uh… don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Jemma stammers.

“I know she’s avoiding me,” Lance says calmly, “and I’ve spent the last two days coming up with reasons why. So whatever it is, I’d rather get it over with now.”

Wordlessly, Jemma steps aside to let him into the apartment.

“I’m going to go hide out in my room,” Jemma says after she escorts Lance to the living room. “Please let me know when I can have my apartment back.”

“This really isn’t the place for this, Lance,” Skye begins when she hears the door to Jemma’s room shut.

“No, it’s not,” he agrees, “but since you’re avoiding me, this is where we’ve doing it.”

Skye doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s actually being pretty reasonable, but she still hasn’t figured out how she wants to handle things.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Just tell me what I did.”

And that’s the thing that really sucks. As much as this is about them, he hasn’t really done anything. He’s been her friend. He’s comforted her when she was a wreck. And even when they had sex, she was the one who decided they were going to pretend it never happened.

“It’s nothing,” she tells him. “I just needed to sort some things out.”

“And you needed to move out to do it?” he sounds exasperated and he folds him arms across his chest.

“I didn’t move out,” she says. “I’ve been gone for less than 48 hours.”

“But you couldn’t sort things out with me?” now he sounds hurt.

“No,” it’s the honest truth. “All you do is talk about Bobbi. Aside from the other night, we haven’t spoken about my life in months.”

She realizes as she’s speaking that she’s not entirely correct. It’s been at least a couple of months since Lance last mentioned Bobbi, and even before that he didn’t sound too bitter. And yes, they don’t talk about her life a lot, but that’s a combination of her private nature and the fact that it’s her job to be concerned about his life.

“I’m sorry,” he says, although Skye’s no longer sure he has anything to apologize for. “I’m sorry I’ve been self-centered, and I’m sorry if I’ve done anything else. Just please come home and at least talk to me about it.”

“It’s not you, it’s me,” Skye says, even though it might be the most ridiculous, clichéd thing to ever leave her mouth.

“Is it a guy?” Lance asks. It’s the only thing he can imagine her not feeling comfortable talking to him about (excluding the adoption thing, but it seems like she’s kept that a secret from pretty much everyone).

He hasn’t asked her about a guy since Trip. And they really didn’t talk about her love life before that, either. He’s never put much thought into why he’s avoided that particular topic, now that he’s talking about it, he’s realizing certain things.

Thinking that Skye was dating Trip sucked. It felt like someone sucker punched him in the gut. And even when they turned out to just be friends, that feeling lingered.

Maybe in the back of his mind, he knew that’s what it would feel like to hear Skye was with someone else. And maybe he’s always gone out of his way to avoid feeling that.

“What does it matter if it’s a guy?” Skye sloppily tries to deflect the question.

“Because I’d be jealous,” the words slip out casually, like he’s telling her what he wants for breakfast or something. It just feels natural to say it. Of course he’d be jealous.

And maybe he’s completely fucked himself over by saying it, maybe she doesn’t care if he’d be bothered by the thought of her seeing someone else. But he can’t be bothered to care.

And if he’s just fucked himself over with this admission, then kissing her can’t make things any worse.

So he does.

That feels natural too, like his lips belong against hers, like his hands fit perfectly on her waist. And it still feels right when she kisses him back, wrapping her arms around his neck.

This isn’t like the last time they kissed, so frantic and charged with emotions directed at other things, at other people. This is calmer and happier. And it’s only about them.

His hands are sliding up to tangle themselves in her hair when Jemma reappears.

“Not that I’m not happy for you,” se says quietly, though Lance and Skye still jump at the sound of her voice, “and I truly am. But you have your own house to do this in.”

Blushing bright red, they excuse themselves. Skye even leaves her laptop and clothing behind, she’s so preoccupied.

They drive home in silence and Lance struggles to concentrate on the road as he comes down from the high of their kiss.

It just felt so good.

He goes to grab Skye’s hand once he gets out of the car, but she’s already halfway to the front door.

“I can’t do this again,” she tells him once they’re both inside. The drive home has cooled her off in a way it hasn’t for him.

“What?” he sputters in shock.

“When we had sex,” this is the first time she’s admitting to him that it actually happened, “it almost destroyed our friendship. We were tip-toeing around each other for weeks and it took months to completely get over it.”

“Yeah, but this time I’m not going to wake up in the morning still in love with someone else,” he needs her to understand why it’s different with someone else.

His use of the word love startles Skye.

“Are you saying you’re in love with me?” this is too much, too fast for her.

“What I’m saying is that I love you and I’m attracted to you and I could see myself falling in love with you. I want to give us a chance of getting there, and that means giving this relationship a shot when there aren’t any other complications in the way.”

It’s not a grand declaration of true love, which is a relief to Skye. This is manageable; it’s not terrifying, at least not completely. This is something she wants.

Before she can second-guess herself, she pulls him in close and kisses him. He wraps his arms around her waist and lifts her up, not breaking the kiss as he carried her to the living room couch.

They spend the rest of the night there, kissing and laughing and figuring out how they’re going to break the news to Skye’s dad.

When she wakes up in his arms the next morning, Skye doesn’t even start to panic. Whatever dumb decisions it took to get them here, she’s happy with where they ended up.


End file.
